Counter-Strike: GO, And The Five Week EU PS3 Delay

“Where can I play Counter-Strike: Global Offensive?” asks the innocently poised question on Valve’s FAQ page. The answer? “CS:GO is currently available on PS3, Xbox 360, PC and Mac.” It’s accurate, unless, of course, you’re based in Europe, in which case it’s not available on PlayStation 3.

And it’s five weeks late.

On other formats, including Sony’s main competitor the Xbox 360, Counter-Strike is available around the world. And frustratingly, it’s available on PlayStation 3 outside of Europe – if you’ve got a SCEA account you can download and play it right now, and have been able to do so since launch.

The game came out on the 21st of August (and by all accounts it’s pretty good) – that’s a fair chunk of time for European PS3 owners to get worked up about the delay, and they have: each week, when the PSN Store Update post rolls around and CS:GO isn’t on there, fans are understandably upset.

A week or two we can understand though – the game needs to be filtered through SCEE’s multiple language, multiple departmental structure. But when we picked up on a European (official) tweet that was knocked back by SCEE’s Fred Dutton it’s clear the game has had a few issues.

But five weeks?

[drop2]Is this a certification thing? Is there a bug that the SCEE process picked up that the SCEA counterparts didn’t? Possibly.

But what’s frustrating PS3 owners the most is the lack of transparency from those that write and comment on the official PlayStation Blogs.

It seems like those that can comment are hamstrung, either by a lack of information themselves or some hidden corporate red tape held in place by SCEE higher-ups or Valve themselves.

“Sorry, again I have nothing to say on it still,” apologised SCEE’s Jawad Ashraf on the blog last week after another no-show. It’s a familar, albeit rather sad, message.

“I’ve no new information to share today,” echoed the team’s Andy Stewart a few weeks back.

And now, should it even arrive this week, it’s up against the behemoth that is Borderlands 2, a first person shooter that did come out on time, digitally too. Has this affected potential sales of Valve’s team-based FPS? It almost certainly has.

But whose responsibility is all this? If it’s a Valve bug, why did it get through SCEA cert so flawlessy and not the European testers? If it’s a language issue, why is it available on Xbox 360 in Europe (complete with multiple languages).

These things rarely offer total parity (and we shouldn’t really expect them to) but this one – clouded in secrecy and no comments – seems somewhat worse than most.

All eyes on a release this week, then.

26 Comments

  1. Even if it comes down to language/localisation for EU though, why is it that Microsoft never (or rarely perhaps) seem to have the same issues as SCEE?

    I mean, i suppose the sensible thing would be to hold back all versions until all versions are good to go, but i can’t see the dev/pub being happy with that, due to lack of money in their pocket. So it’s understandable that they want to release any version of the game as soon as they can.

    Still doesn’t explain why things fall over when it gets to SCEE though. It’s baffling.

  2. “If it’s a language issue, why is it available on Xbox 360 in Europe (complete with multiple languages).”

    That’s hardly fair, completely different company, Microsoft may not care if this is mispelt word in German in the game.

    • I would imagine most Germans wouldn’t either. No? Surely people just want to play it.

    • From what I heard, the US version already has all the languages included.

    • It’s available in German on PC and on Xbox 360. If there was a spelling error in the German version then it must have gone unnoticed through both Valve and Microsoft QA.

      I’m pretty sure SCEE simply lost the copy that’s supposed to be uploaded to the store and hope that at some point people just forget about the game…

      • that’s what i’ve been saying for ages.

        scee get stuff, and then it just vanishes.
        they don’t know what’s happening, the developers and publishers don’t know, and we sure as hell never find out.

        something is very broken at scee.

      • Whoever’s fault anything is, the system is Sony’s & it’s the responsibility ends there.

        Also don’t buy the QA stuff, all games release with bugs some of them game breaking, so it’s hardly like the QA is a bunch of meticulous super-slueths who go through a game’s code with a fine toothed comb

  3. I just this second left a reply to Forrests_01 question in forums on this exact topic.
    And he was saying “will people still be interested if it gets released”?
    The chances are it’ll end up on a “to do pile” with Dawngaurd and Double dragon and other bits of digital content that have gone awol.
    If it ever does come out later down the line people won’t be bothered as those that really wanted it got it on ther platforms or set up a usa account also there’s a few good triple AAA titles due out so when it does get released they won’t be bothered buying it.

    • Yeah, my thought is pretty much just that people will be ‘over it’ by the time it gets released, or worse, others that have been playing the game for however long once it is released in EU will be so far ahead of those just starting out that it creates an entry barrier where you are pwned in every game through no real fault of your own.

  4. I wonder whether it will come free for Plus like they did with Trine 2, especially if this lasts another few weeks.

    Valve must be furious for the losses they’re obviously suffering.

  5. Thanks to TSA to at least running an article about this, I can’t understand why most euro based gaming sites have said virtually nothing about it even though it’s a ridiculous situation

    Surelt if there were articles and story’s about it everywhere Sony would be forced to comment further?

    • That would just prompt the response “we do not comment on rumours & speculation” that they like to bring out at every opportunity! :)

  6. Its always a SCEE problem. That says it all people.

    People will not bother with this as much now, its late being released and other decent FPS games are coming out soon.

  7. Slightly OT, but shouldn’t we have a Youtube app by now?

    • we should, the xbox version launched in europe the same day the us version did, yet here we are and no idea when or even if, this is scee, we’ll ever see it.
      another failure on the part of scee.

      thankfully being a free download it’s easy enough to get it from the us store.

      but still, it’s ridiculous.

  8. It’s cock-ups like this that will deter developers new and old.
    If Steam and Microsoft can do it without a hitch, then Sony should be able to do the same.
    It’s not just lost a revenue for Steam, it’s going to have a continuous development cost too, how long before they just say “fuck it, if you want it, buy it on steam”?

  9. there’s a quote i read in a book the other day that made me think of scee.

    “We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to enquire. We know that the wages of secrecy are corruption. We know that in secrecy error, undetected, will flourish and subvert.”

  10. has anyone asked Valve what’s going on it is there games.

    • I suspect Valve have been emailing SCEE every week demanding what the hell is going on as i doubt that they would sit by and let this continue without any effort to find out why it is not out.

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